Re: Democracy and organisation : let's make a revolution

On Tue, 2002-06-25 at 07:21, Tom Lane wrote:
> Josh Berkus <josh(at)agliodbs(dot)com> writes:
> > Frankly, my feeling is, as a "geek-to-geek" product, PostgreSQL is already
> > adequately marketed through our huge network of DBA users and code
> > contributors.
>
> Well, mumble ... it seems to me that we are definitely suffering from
> a "buzz gap" (cf missile gap, Dr Strangelove, etc) compared to MySQL.
> That doesn't bother me in itself, but the long-term implications are
> scary. If MySQL manages to attract a larger development community as
> a consequence of more usage or better marketing, then eventually they
> will be ahead of us on features and every other measure that counts.
> Once we're number two with no prayer of catching up, how long will our
> project remain viable? So, no matter how silly you might think
> "MySQL is better" is today, you've got to consider the prospect that
> it will become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

#pragma no-flames-please

When/if MySQL becomes better than PostgreSQL, we'd simply have a still
better open-source/free software database than we have now.

In what way exactly is this bad ?

Perhaps (hypothetically speaking) the "hot breath" of MySQL becoming
hotter and hotter will also induce more ideas and performance/enterprise
optimisations for postgres ...

If MySQL were better than PostgreSQL, you could really do two things :

(1) divert your development effort to MySQL, injecting it with the good
stuff known from the postgres effort
(2) make sure postgres becomes even better !
or
(3) turn away from computers and programming in disgust (not
recommended)

Of course, as things stand now, MySQL has still a long way to run before
it's up to par with PostgreSQL on enterprise-level database features.
But *both* are not yet at 100% !

I do agree we need more publicity for PostgreSQL, I mention it every
time I explain a database backend system to our prospects. I really am
a great fan of postgres and use it exclusively (except to look how
poorly other db's compare with it :-).

[snip]
> But I get the impression that he's loosened up of late. If MySQL stops
> being limited by what one guy can do or review, their rate of progress
> could improve dramatically.
which in itself is not bad at all.

Look at it this way and perhaps the situation doesn't appear too
negative:

A guesstimate of 90% of all open-source/free software systems and
development is GNU/Linux. Nonetheless, the remaining 10% is *very*
active and are in some ways even ahead of the Linux track. In other
ways they are different. In still other ways, they're behind Linux.
For specific tasks, the *BSD family is vastly superior to Linux.
Everyone should use and support the tools that fit the bill.

For the marketing stuff, what about asking some big company's IT dept
for a statement, sort of "FooBarBank chooses/switches to PostgreSQL open
source database"? Then it's just a matter of making a press release
(wording is very important, anyone proficient in making press releases
here ?) and time them adequately.

I'll ask around here to see whether we can publicize some cases.

Cheers,
Tycho

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--
Tycho Fruru tycho(at)fruru(dot)com
"Prediction is extremely difficult. Especially about the future."
- Niels Bohr